Nokia Developer News

Congratulations to Sajid Ali Anjum, our Nokia Developer Champion of the month for August. Based in Pakistan, Sajid has worked on mobile platforms since 2008. Having earned a bachelor’s degree in computer systems engineering from the college of engineering and technology at the Islamia University of Bahawalpur, he now focuses on building his company, SajiSoft, and on developing for Nokia Asha Touch phones. Sajid's special interests include social networking, location-based services, mobile utilities, and games.

On Nokia Store, Sajid’s company offers several games and utilities, including Math n Fun, a game for practicing math; Brain Bash, a cartoon game; and mLocker, a file-locking utility. His most recent app is Tangle Craze, an arcade puzzle game optimized for the full touch UI for Series 40.

Sajid shares his skills with the Nokia community as a frequent contributor to the Nokia Developer discussion boards and Wiki, where he can be found under his username sajisoft. In addition, his skills have won him several developer awards, including the Nokia Calling All Innovators 2011 competition and Nokia Qt Ambassador. Sajid engages the wider developer community through his blog on the Sajisoft site. He also speaks publicly on topics that include getting started with mobile programming, and developing mobile games.Bravo, Sajid!

Meet Sajid Ali Anjum.

Learn what it takes to join the Nokia Developer Champion reward and recognition program.

Beta versions of updated Java and web tools for targeting full-touch Nokia Asha devices will be released Monday June 25.

Information, documentation and guides for these upcoming releases are available now, allowing you to familiarise yourself with the new capabilities of the tools.

Today's documentation releases include: 

• Porting to Series 40 guide
• Series 40 full-touch design guidelines
• Design and user experience library
• Java developer's library (standalone and Eclipse plug-in versions)
• Series 40 Web App developer's library (online and downloadable versions)
• Updated Java documentation
• Updated Series 40 web app documentation 

More guides and material, including 'getting started' technical videos, will be published on June 25 to coincide with the release of the new tools.

The Nokia Asha 305, Asha 306 and Asha 311 are the first all-touch Series 40 devices, and are expected to ship in the third quarter of 2012 (second quarter for Asha 305). They will have an estimated retail price in the EUR 63-68 range for Asha 305, Asha 306 and EUR 92 for Asha 311 (excluding taxes and subsidies).

Meet the Nokia SDK 2.0 for Java

Introduction to Nokia Web Tools 2.0 

What do you get when you mix big brands with big brains and big prizes?  A one-of-a-kind program to connect developers, brands and mobile technology – The Big Brand Hackathon.

The Big Brand Hack is on this weekend in San Francisco, and it puts developers in front of some of the world’s most well-known consumer brands as partners who can transform concepts into code and ideas into apps. 

This is a chance for developers in the US to build some amazing experiences for consumers and get recognized by some powerhouse brands. Register here to compete for more than $25,000 in cash and $20,000 in prizes. Kraft Foods and The Home Depot will reward developers who design apps that drive brand awareness through social, location and other mobile services.

We will be there, awarding up to 50 Nokia Lumia 800s to the developers who create the best Windows Phone apps.

Bravo TV will also be filming the hack as part of an upcoming reality show based on Silicon Valley.

Twenty developer finalists selected over the two day hack will have a chance to showcase their app to attendees (500 plus) at the Social-Loco conference.

The Big Brand Hackathon is June 16,17 with winners showcasing their apps at the Social_Loco conference June 18.

Participating brands will share their business challenge to developers. Teams and individual developers spend two days coding to come up with creative, technology-based solutions that include a location and social feature that brands can put into the marketplace.

Big Brand Hackathon prize packages include:

·       HOME DEPOT 1^st  Prize  $8,000.   2^nd  Prize   $3,000

·       KRAFT   1^st Prize $8,000.   2^nd Prize $3,000

·       Best Use of Social APIs   $1,000

·       Best Use of Location APIs   $1,000

·       People's Choice  $1,000

·       Best Windows Phone Apps  Nokia Lumia 800 smartphones (up to 50)

Learn more and register to join the Big Brand hack at http://bigbrandhackathon.eventbrite.com/

Full-touch has arrived on the world’s largest mobile platform, with the launch of three innovative new Nokia Asha devices 

The Nokia Asha 305, Asha 306, and Asha 311 bring a full-touch form factor to Series 40, and the touchscreen devices will let Series 40 developers showcase the biggest, most tactile apps ever seen on the platform.

Nokia Asha 305 specs

Nokia Asha 306 specs

Nokia Asha 311 specs

The devices are expected to  ship in the third quarter of 2012 (second quarter for Asha 305), and will have an estimated retail price in the EUR 63-68 range for Asha 305 and Asha 306 and EUR 92 for Asha 311 (excluding taxes and subsidies).

While representing an innovative new chapter for Series 40, all three devices remain true to the values that have helped us ship 1.5 billion Series 40 devices so far - accessibility, value and utility. The new phones take advantage of Nokia Broswer 2.0, a major recent update which uses cloud technology to reduce data consumption when browsing the web by up to 90%. The pre-loaded social client makes it simple to access Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. All users will also receive an exclusive gift of 40 EA game titles, free to download and keep forever.

Consider the growth of Series 40 downloads - of the first billion Nokia Store downloads, Series 40 devices accounted for 13%. Of the fifth (and most recent) billion, Series 40 comprised 42% . There are now over 100,000 content items available in Nokia Store for Series 40 devices, and nearly 25,000 specifically targeting Nokia Asha and its more advanced features. Adding an all screen paradigm to this growing app platform creates even more possibility for your Java and web apps.

The Java and web tools Series 40 developers know and use today for Series 40 development are being updated and augmented with additional capabilities that will allow you to target these exciting new devices. We will announce these updated Java and web tooling releases and release dates as soon as possible here on the Nokia Developer blog.

Portuguese-speaking developers now have a great opportunity for training on Nokia platforms: 13 webinars over the next two months.

All these Nokia webinars will be conducted in Portuguese, and all will held at 4 p.m. Brasilia time.

Sign up now or get more information for any or all of these Nokia webinars:

12 June: Qt Network explained

13 June: Dicas de otimização para aplicações Qt

14 June: Qt SDK: debugging e profiling

19 June: O que há de novo no Qt 5

20 June: Usando Qt Mobility em suas aplicações Qt

21 June: Entendendo Model-View Delegates no Qt

26 June: Utilização de sensores com Nokia Windows Phone

27 June: Game API – J2ME S40

28 June: Web 1.5 SDK para Série 40

3 July: Introdução ao XNA Game Programming no Nokia Windows Phone

5 July: Como montar uma App em diversas resoluções de tela

10 July: Apps de consumo de APIs de Internet para mobile phones

11 July: Apps de consumo de APIs de Internet para Windows Phone

It is often difficult to select which contributors to the Nokia Developer Wiki deserve special recognition. Nokia Developer Champion Luis Valente made it easy this month with a stunning 300 article updates during May. This monumental effort was in support of the recent merger of the Nokia Developer Knowledgebase and Nokia Developer Wiki.

Luis is based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and holds a Doctorate degree in Informatics from PUC-Rio, a top university in Brazil. His research passions include innovative mobile game interfaces using audio, gestures, and tactile feedback. Out of this research comes The Audio Flashlight series of games that allow competition between sighted an un-sighted contestants.

Crangratulations Luis, and thank you for your contributions to the Nokia Developer Community.

>> More on Luis' work in this discussion thread.

Nokia Developer Champion Craig Miller founded Spatial Minds -- a U.S. geo-spatial research, development, and consulting firm -- in 2004 and has more than 20 years of experience designing, implementing, and managing location-based services (LBS). He is also an advocate of Qt, Nokia’s application and UI framework. Craig is a cofounder of the Seattle (Washington) Qt User group, and he recently organized the group’s booth at LinuxFest Northwest, which featured local businesses and their Qt apps. Craig is also an active member of the Cascadia Users of Geospatial Open Source (CUGOS) and the author of Spatial Minds’ Hello World blog.

Prior to forming his company, Craig was a Senior Software Engineer with Autodesk Location Services, where he developed innovative LBS products, designed the COM plug-in API for the tablet-based Onsite View, and earned an LBS-related patent. Craig holds a master’s degree in Spatial Information Science and Engineering, and he has done research at the University of Maine National Center for Geographic Information Analysis and Battelle Pacific Northwest National Labs' Remote Sensing Group. Craig also has hands-on experience and formal training in nearly all aspects of wired and wireless enterprise, mobile, and desktop location-based solutions. He has been a Nokia Developer member since 2010.




Meet Champion of the Month Craig Miller.

Nokia Developer Champions are rightly celebrated for their developer skills. But they are also extraordinary people.

Take Simon Botes, a Nokia Developer Champion based in South Africa. Simon recently undertook an epic road trip of more than 5,000 km. He travelled to a farm outside Lyndenburg, in the South African province of Mpumalanga. There, Simon provided seven days of training on mobile phones to nearly a dozen quadriplegics living in a home run by Ama Wheelies, a non-profit organisation that helps people with spinal-cord injuries. The 32 Nokia C5-03 devices he trained them on were donated by Nokia Connects. ‘Helping these disabled people really is a life-changing feeling’, Simon says. ‘I’m glad to be able to help.’

Such was Simon’s commitment and pride at being a Nokia Developer Champion that he had his Nokia Developer Champion t-shirt couriered to the next stop on his driving route when he realised he hadn’t packed it. The next day, T-shirt in hand, Simon set off for the Ama Wheelies farm. When he finally arrived in Lyndenburg, he trained several of the residents and their caretakers to use their new Nokia C5-03 device.

Moses Mlombo is one of the Ama Wheelies residents now using a Nokia phone. Paralyzed from the neck down after being shot in the chest six years ago, Moses uses a specially adapted Nokia C5-03 phone, both to communicate with others and run a small business that recycles printer cartridges. He uses a prosthetic on his wrist to hold the phone and taps on the phone’s keys with a mouthstick. In this way, Moses says, ‘I can still have a meaningful life.’

As for Simon, after his seven-day training session at Ama Wheelies, he visited nearby Kruger National Park to document wildlife species for a new mobile app he’s working on – and to take some vacation time. ‘This was one of the most awesome outreach programs I have helped on’, Simon says. ‘A HUGE thank-you to Nokia Connects...you guys rock!’ We think Simon rocks, too.

Simon Botes, standing in black t-shirt, training Ama Wheelies residents Amos Nkosi (on left) and Bethuel Manyika.

Headphones on. Tilt the seat back. Get ready, because Nokia Developer is about to turn your town into Dev City with its Ready.Set () {Code} Challenge. 

We are hitting the road to 13-cities looking for developers who want to build an experience not just another app. To kick off the Ready.Set () {Code}Challenge, Nokia Developer will hold hackathons across the US and Canada beginning in May. You can sign up individually or form your own team to build the coolest, baddest apps for the Windows Phone platform and Nokia Lumia devices. 

Prizes will be awarded on site at each event for the top 3 created apps, top student created app, and most Nokia-branded developer (use your imagination). App winners will be judged on creativity, usability, technical difficulty and app presentation. 

1^st place:                                    $500 gift card & Nokia Lumia 900

2^nd place:                                   $250 gift card & Nokia Lumia 900

3^rd place:                                    $100 gift card & Nokia Lumia 900

Student Winner:                        $150 gift card & Nokia Lumia 900

Most Nokia-Branded Dev :      $100 gift card & Nokia Lumia 900

At Nokia, we don’t have ordinary developers, so these won’t be ordinary hacks. We have some amazing experiences in store – like our Re-Charge Room - for developers to chill out between pounding out code. So come showoff your skills and earn rewards. Space will be limited so register early.

The Challenge is on. . . .Ready.Set () {Code}

Ready.Set () {Code} Challenge Schedule:

08:30 a.m.         Light breakfast and registration

09:00 a.m.         Welcome and competition overview

09:30 a.m.         Let the hacking begin!

12:30 p.m.         Lunch

07:00 p.m.         Show us your app/Dinner

08:00 p.m.         Winners announced

Today at CTIA Wireless 2012 in New Orleans we announced multiple significant new app partnerships.

Developers and brands including Rovio, ESPN, PGA Tour, Paypal and Groupon are the latest partners in the growing Nokia Lumia ecosystem, and their arrival is another step forward in our ongoing work to bring differentiated and original app experiences to Nokia Lumia.

As part of these new partnerships, iconic games like Angry Birds Space will join core news and entertainment apps from the likes of AOL, News Week and Time Magazine on Nokia Lumia. In addition, PayPal, Groupon, Box, EA Interactive and Tripdot are committed to delivering great new experiences to the growing base of Nokia Lumia users. Many of the apps launch as Nokia Lumia exclusives.

Our SVP of Nokia Developer, Marco Argenti, said the following in the announcement. "We are focused on delivering great, locally relevant apps, and importantly, those which offer unique, exclusive and original experiences. With Nokia Lumia smartphones now available in 48 markets, developers are rapidly recognizing the business opportunities and creating their best work for our consumers.”

There are now more than 80,000 apps now available in Windows Phone Marketplace, and a range of Lumia-only app experiences that differentiate the device from other Windows Phones. Here is what Nokia Lumia users can expect following today's announcements.

Rovio – Angry Birds Space and other titles joining the original Angry Birds on Nokia Lumia and Windows Phone

Rovio is building a dedicated design and development team to create games for Nokia Lumia smartphones and the wider Windows Phone ecosystem, with the goal of developing and publishing all future Rovio titles as soon as possible. 

Electronic Arts (EA) Interactive - bringing leading game titles to Nokia Lumia and Windows Phone

Electronic Arts (EA) Interactive will continue to deliver leading game titles to Nokia Lumia and Windows Phone consumers, including FIFA, Madden NFL, NBA Jam, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR® 2012, Mirror’s Edge and Yahtzee. These games join titles such as Needs for Speed™ Undercover, Need for Speed™ Hot Pursuit, The Sims™ 3, Spider Jack, and MONOPOLY which are already available in Windows Phone Marketplace

Groupon – Exclusive to Nokia Lumia for six months from launch

Groupon is currently working on an extensive upgrade of its Windows Phone app for launch in September 2012. The app will include a newly developed augmented reality deal discovery function to combine map and Points-of-Interest (POI) data with what is seen via the camera's viewfinder, enabling users to see virtual Groupon deals, in real-time, nearby. The app will be exclusive to Nokia Lumia customers for six months.

ESPN – Extended exclusivity on Nokia Lumia until May 2013

The exclusive ESPN Hub will deliver a number of key updates in coming months, including scores on Live Tiles, team-level panoramas, personalization of scores, leagues and teams, and additional sports coverage such as Tennis, NASCAR and the 2012 Olympics. Additionally, a Windows Phone version of the ESPN Fantasy Football app will launch exclusively on Nokia Lumia smartphones this coming fall.

PayPal for Windows Phone

PayPal and Nokia will work together to bring PayPal's secure, fast and easy payments capabilities to the Windows Phone platform and Nokia Lumia smartphones, globally. PayPal will leverage the power of Windows Phone Live Tiles to create a compelling user experience that provides users with the flexibility to pay on-the-go.

AOL Entertainment Hub - exclusive to Nokia Lumia for six months

Available exclusively to Nokia Lumia users at launch, AOL is set to introduce the AOL Entertainment Hub, bringing together the best of AOL’s content to deliver an immersive and inter-connected experience on Windows Phone. Users can listen to one of 55,000 radio stations via SHOUTcast, stream free music albums with AOL’s Listening Party or view Trailers and Movie listings.

Time Magazine for Windows Phone

TIME.com announced the forthcoming availability of TIME for Windows Phone. Utilising the stunning Windows Phone UI, the app will allow users to view TIME.com content, receive breaking news alerts, watch rich media content including video and share stories via the Windows Phone People Hub, while delivering the latest news and stories to users first via Live Tiles.

News Week – The Daily Beast app for Windows Phone

Newsweek’s digital partner The Daily Beast is coming to Windows Phone. With a smart, speedy take on the news from around the world, and the depth and investigative power of Newsweek magazine, the Daily Beast app delivers the latest content through Live Tiles and combines the unique style of The Daily Beast with the Windows Phone UI. For users who only have minutes to digest the latest news, the app also delivers The Cheat Sheet – your one stop must have reads from across the world – uniquely designed for Windows Phone.

Box for Windows Phone

The new Windows Phone app from Box - the company focused on providing workers with simple, secure sharing from anywhere - will be available to Nokia Lumia consumers this summer. With support for nine languages, Box for Windows Phone will allow users across the globe to browse, search and share files from their account.

Tripdots - Exclusive to Windows Phone for three months from launch

Tripdots helps drivers optimise their driving behaviors while connecting with other vehicle owners and sharing driving efficiency achievements via social networks. The app lets users monitor the operation of their vehicles to enable cost savings through better understanding fuel economy. Everyone can participate in the MPG Leader Board game, and information is only sent to drivers after their trip is complete.

PGA Tour – Exclusive for Nokia Lumia for 12 months from launch

The PGA Tour is launching a new mobile app to provide fans with live, enhanced coverage of PGA Tour golf events on the Windows Phone platform. Developed with Nokia, the app will be available exclusively on Nokia Lumia smartphones beginning in late June 2012. The new app provides fans with live tournament scoring, highlights and player information and interactive, augmented coverage of select events and holes, showing each player's exact position and scoring information.

Get started developing for Nokia Lumia

Nokia Lumia device specis

Windows Phone developer wiki

Nokia Developer Champion Vishal Dharankar is an independent consultant at Xenon Softwares and developer of the free FuelPad  and MyFinance apps in Nokia Store. Based in Nashik, Maharashtra, India, he teaches post-graduate computer science when he’s not busy coding apps of his own.

Last month he organized a full-day workshop to introduce students to Windows Phone development using Visual Studio and Expression Blend. While most students entering the workshop had no experience with Windows Phone work, by the end of the day 30 students competed in a 3-hour sprint to come up with the best app concepts. In an informal survey of the participants, the attendees were most impressed with the development tools and how “hassle free” it was to begin development for Windows Phone.

Finland-based duo Niklas Karlström and Kristian Engsjö, aka Pico Brothers, have broken through the 100 million download barrier in Nokia Store.

Pico Brothers are the second developers to achieve 100,000,000 downloads, reaching the milestone just two weeks after UTV Indiagames.

The company's strategy for success has involved delivering simple, clever apps that provide short bursts of entertainment.

Apps like ‘Milk the Cow’, 'Talking Hamster’ and 'Flashlight Extreme' are Pico Brothers apps that deliver instant fun and utility.   

“We make the apps that people want to have,” says founder Niklas Karlström, “That’s given us momentum, and it’s snowballed.” 

Niklas and Kristian have achieved their success without needing to invest in additional staff. “We both still work from home, although I have a baby now so sometimes I go to an office to work in peace,” Niklas says. His dream for five years time is to “have fun and to do something that makes sense”. For ten years time it’s “to still have fun”.

Their range of apps in Nokia Store are about to be joined by apps on another platform; Windows Phone. 

The duo is now hard at work developing apps for Nokia Lumia and Windows Phone Marketplace: “As a starting point, we’re looking at getting about ten of our apps on the Windows Phone platform, including Talking Cat, some of our other entertainment apps and the anti-mosquito app.”

The secret of success, according to Karlström, is dreaming up lots of creative ideas, only some of which come to fruition, “We have lots and lots of ideas, and some of those go as far as being published as apps.” 

Congratulations Pico Brothers on this incredible achievement. We look forward to seeing your efforts for Nokia Lumia and Windows Phone.
 

In an increasingly competitive app landscape, it’s truly exciting to see developers surface and achieve real, global success. And this week, we saw just that happen. UTV Indiagames – India’s premier gaming company - has made history, and become the first developer to break through the 100 million downloads milestone in Nokia Store. More impressive, according to their founder and CEO Vishal Gondal, is that over 50 million new downloads have been driven in the past three months alone.

UTV Indiagames is a great example of a company which has worked to achieve success with Series 40 consumers through game genres such as Cricket, Bollywood, Casual and Action - not only in their home market, but also overseas. Their top performing countries are India, Vietnam, Brazil, Turkey and Indonesia – truly, a global hit.

As head of Developer activities here at Nokia, I’m delighted not only to see this milestone reached, but to witness the power of localization in action. Their success underlines that the local approach is more important than ever. The combination of great locally relevant games, localized languages, and Nokia’s ability to merchandize or ‘surface’ apps through locally managed Nokia Store catalogues, has seen their popularity continually rise.

With a huge base of loyal consumers, UTV Indiagames have also leveraged Nokia’s key local monetization features.  The company offers 100 paid titles, and over 300 free ad-supported titles, thus ensuring consumers can enjoy games no matter what their payment means and abilities. The team is now looking to further expand payment options and consumer choice, with micro payments tailored to specific markets.

So what’s next? The UTV Indiagames team have their sights set on 1 billion downloads, and will focus on great games for Series 40 and Nokia Asha consumers, while also developing new games on the Windows Phone platform for Nokia Lumia consumers, which will be available in Marketplace soon.

The team at IndiaGames have brilliantly authored their success, and deserve their place in the history books. Today, with more than 100 million downloads being enjoyed by customers in all corners of the world, they set a new industry benchmark driving global success, locally.

Putting the user at the heart of your app designs is the key to creating winning apps. Our upcoming webinar walks you through a design example focusing on helping a user determine where they are, to facilitate the use of a location based application for Series 40 Touch and Type phones.

After giving an overview of the available methods for determining the user’s location, the webinar will discuss some of the fundamental drivers behind mobile app design, such as user mind set, use context, and small screen limitations.

The webinar will explore practical design implementations to enable the user to estimate their location, with a focus on the ways in which you can translate technology into an easy-to-use application.

The presentation concludes with an overview of the Series 40 UI design tools and services offered by Nokia to help you deliver winning app design.

Overall, this session guides you on how to make complex technology accessible to Series 40 users.

• Sign up for the first session (2 May, 7 am UTC) 
• Sign up for the second session 3 May, 3 pm UTC)